*”Dandy” Dan Daniel was one of the giants of NEW YORK radio, both physically (he stood 6′ 5″) and on the air, where his long career spanned four big radio homes.

The Texas native, who died Tuesday at 81, came to New York in 1961 from stints at WDGY in Minneapolis and KXYZ in Houston. At WMCA (570), Daniel was at first the overnight jock, soon moving to afternoons as part of the classic “Good Guy” lineup that made WMCA a fierce top-40 competitor in the Beatles era. Daniel moved to mornings at WMCA before leaving in 1970 to do network announcing (NBC’s “Monitor” and several game shows).

His second New York chapter came a few years later at WYNY (97.1), NBC’s adult contemporary FM, followed by time at WHN (1050), its country successor WYNY on 103.5, and then WCBS-FM (101.1), where he worked middays from 1996 until his retirement in 2002.

Yes, we have half of 2017 left, but it’s not too early to start thinking about the 2018 Tower Site Calendar. Preorders will begin later this week. If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact Lisa.

You don't have to stop reading here! Each week's NorthEast Radio Watch is packed full of exclusive, in-depth reporting and analysis from across the nine states and five provinces we've been serving since 1994. You won't find anything like it on any free site - and you can read the rest of this week's column for just $2.99 by clicking on the "Purchase Only" link below.

Orclick here to subscribe and enjoy full access to current NERW and Tower Site of the Week columns and two decades of searchable archives -- for as little as 25 cents per day.

If you are already a member, please login to view the rest of this column. (If the site does not recognize your username, don't panic! Either your subscription has expired and we need to reactivate your account, or your username and email do not match our payment records and we need to link them. Please emailLisa,or call her at 585-442-5411, for instructions.)

You don't have to stop reading here! Each week's NorthEast Radio Watch is packed full of exclusive, in-depth reporting and analysis from across the nine states and five provinces we've been serving since 1994. You won't find anything like it on any free site - and you can read the rest of this week's column for just $2.99 by clicking on the "Purchase Only" link below.

Orclick here to subscribe and enjoy full access to current NERW and Tower Site of the Week columns and two decades of searchable archives -- for as little as 25 cents per day.

If you are already a member, please login to view the rest of this column. (If the site does not recognize your username, don't panic! Either your subscription has expired and we need to reactivate your account, or your username and email do not match our payment records and we need to link them. Please emailLisa,or call her at 585-442-5411, for instructions.)

GROW WITH US! Fybush Media and RadioInsight have joined forces to provide a bigger ad sales platform for the broadcast and streaming industry. Are you the right fit to become our next sales professional? We’re seeking someone creative and energetic who knows his or her way around the radio, TV and streaming community. Generous commission and profit-sharing. Want to join our team? Let’s talk.

Fybush.com isn’t a mere website.We’re a community.

And we take care of our community members. Do you have a piece of equipment you want to sell? Or one you want to buy? Are you looking for a job? An employee? We can help you with all of those searches and more! We offer classified ads at reasonable prices, seen by people in every part of the industry. Contact Lisa for details.

You don't have to stop reading here! Each week's NorthEast Radio Watch is packed full of exclusive, in-depth reporting and analysis from across the nine states and five provinces we've been serving since 1994. You won't find anything like it on any free site - and you can read the rest of this week's column for just $2.99 by clicking on the "Purchase Only" link below.

Orclick here to subscribe and enjoy full access to current NERW and Tower Site of the Week columns and two decades of searchable archives -- for as little as 25 cents per day.

If you are already a member, please login to view the rest of this column. (If the site does not recognize your username, don't panic! Either your subscription has expired and we need to reactivate your account, or your username and email do not match our payment records and we need to link them. Please emailLisa,or call her at 585-442-5411, for instructions.)

From the NERW Archives

Yup, we’ve been doing this a long time now, and so we’re digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW was covering one, five, ten, fifteen and – where available – twenty years ago this week, or thereabouts.

Note that the column appeared on an erratic schedule in its earliest years as “New England Radio Watch,” and didn’t go to a regular weekly schedule until 1997.

One Year Ago: June 29, 2015

*It’s a new era in Boston talk radio, for whoever’s left to listen. Today marks the launch of a new mostly-local lineup and new branding at Entercom’s venerable WRKO (680) and the start of the new Rush Limbaugh-anchored talk format at iHeart’s WKOX (1430 Everett). The week also brings new ownership to WMEX (1510) at a price that looks stunningly low (but we’ll show why it might actually be unsustainably high). And it may bring a new talker to another New England market, too.

WRKO first: what was once “the Talk Station” is now “the Voice of Boston,” and the final piece of its new, Rush Limbaugh-free schedule drops into place this morning with a new Boston.com-produced morning show. As had been widely expected, former TV anchor Kim Carrigan is hosting “The Boston.com Morning Show,” with assistance from Jon Meterparel on sports (late of WEEI, down the hall) and producer David Cullinane to deliver “four hours of rapid-cadence news, talk and trending live from the newsroom at Boston.com.”

Market manager Phil Zachary is positioning the new show as a move away from “traditional talk radio…facing strong headwinds,” emphasizing that it’s part of WRKO’s first all-local weekday lineup in 20 years. The rest of that lineup is pretty much as we’d been anticipating: Barry Armstrong will continue to lease the 10 AM-noon slot for his Financial Exchange show, followed in the former Rush slot at noon by former morning man Jeff Kuhner, the lone piece of the schedule produced solely by WRKO. At 3, Howie Carr’s show stays in place, and then it’s syndication after 7 PM.

*For the second time this decade, CANADA’s broadcast regulators have pulled the plug on a licensee occupying a valuable Toronto FM frequency. Aboriginal Voices Radio has been a frequent thorn in the CRTC’s side for failing to live up to its promises to serve urban aboriginal communities in large markets across the country.

Calling it “a decision that shocks only the people who haven’t been paying attention,” our friend Steve Faguy provides a highly detailed look at why the CRTC imposed the death penalty on “Voices Radio,” which will have to shut down CKAV-1 (106.5 Toronto), CKAV-9 (95.7 Ottawa) and its stations in Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver on July 25.

What finally did Voices in was a disastrous CRTC hearing back in May, at which Voices presented the commission with its new consultants, Bray & Partners and Steve Kowch, promising that this time it was going to get its many issues under control. Those problems included a persistent lack of any local programming, much less news (and how could it do any, with a staff of two part-timers at the end?), as well as filing the proper annual reports and maintaining program logs and logger recordings.

Five Years Ago: June 27, 2011

*Want to make every message-board server in NEW YORK melt down from a deluge of speculative posts? It’s easy, really – just spread the word that former Jacor/Clear Channel/Tribune honcho Randy Michaels is coming back into radio in a big way, partnering with an investment firm to take over three of Emmis Communications’ biggest stations, including the struggling WRXP (101.9 New York).

That’s just what happened last week, of course, and it’s a tribute to the IT staffs of the various radio discussion sites that they haven’t crashed under the crush of rumor and wishful thinking that’s surrounded the first few days of the new Merlin Media LLC, Michaels’ partnership with the GTCR private equity firm and Emmis itself, which will continue to hold a minority stake in WRXP and its Chicago sister stations, WLUP (97.9) and WKQX (101.1).

Merlin’s not yet saying what it plans to do with the stations, but the speculation (based on domain-name registrations and one of the company’s first big hires, former WINS general manager Greg Janoff, now Merlin’s executive VP of revenue) is that the rock format in New York is on the way out, to be replaced by some sort of spoken-word format that would provide an FM challenger to CBS Radio’s lucrative AM trio of WCBS/WINS/WFAN and Citadel talker WABC. Unless, of course, the rumored new calls, “WYNY,” are actually pointing toward a revival of country music in a market where that format has been absent for years.

Ten Years Ago: June 26, 2006

It was originally slated to go to Pamal, but the Albany move-in signal of WNYQ (105.7 Malta) will instead go to Regent Communications, which announced Monday that it’s buying the station from Vox. No purchase price has been announced yet for the deal, which will put now-silent WNYQ in a cluster with sports WTMM (1300 Rensselaer), rock simulcast WQBJ (103.5 Cobleskill)/WQBK (103.9 Albany), hot AC WABT (104.5 Mechanicville) and country WGNA (107.7 Albany).

And in Boston, Nassau has confirmed that it’s negotiating with Greater Media to acquire the signal of WKLB (99.5 Lowell) and the intellectual property of WCRB (102.5 Waltham). The company tells the Globe that it intends to keep the classical music going on 99.5 once the deal is completed. Stay tuned…

If you go looking for the most crowded FM dial in the country, the odds are you’ll end up in NEW JERSEY. So it’s always pretty big news when a station in the Garden State manages to make a significant signal upgrade, as Press Communications did last week when it turned on the new 106.5 Bass River Township signal for WKOE, the station that was formerly at 106.3 in Ocean City. The new 106.5 signal, broadcasting with 1450 watts at 683′ above average terrain from the WWSI (Channel 62) tower in Tuckerton, covers a good chunk of the Jersey Shore from southern Ocean County well into Cape May County, and it’s on a clear enough channel to get west almost to Philadelphia on a good car radio, too.

In place of the “Breeze” soft AC simulcast that had been on WKOE at 106.3, Press is using 106.5 to simulcast “G Rock Radio” from WHTG-FM (106.3 Eatontown), creating a two-signal adjacent-channel simulcast that blankets nearly the entire shore. G Rock had been heard on WBBO (98.5 Ocean Acres) in Ocean County, and the WBBO calls will soon be swapped with WKOE.

Fifteen Years Ago: June 25, 2001

We know a bit more about those AM applications in MASSACHUSETTS we mentioned last week: an FCC typo put WSRO (1470 Marlborough)’s new site in the wrong spot. In reality, the station would move to the Lexington site of WAMG (1150 Boston) when it changes its COL to Watertown.

Talker WRKO (680 Boston) has a new PD. Jay Clark is heading to the Entercom station to replace the departed Al Mayers; Clark had been VP/GM of the now-defunct Comedy World network.

Radio Disney is back to a single signal in RHODE ISLAND; Hall Communications flipped WWRI (1450 West Warwick) away from the Mouse on Wednesday night (6/20), changing to a simulcast of the urban oldies it’s programming on WNBH (1340 New Bedford).

Twenty Years Ago: June 25, 1996

There’s a new radio station on the air in New Hampshire’s largest market. WAEF, 96.5 FM, took to the airwaves at 5pm on Thursday, June 27, after a day of recorded heartbeat noises. “96.5 the Fox” is promoting itself as “Rock without the hard edge,” and what it appears to be is a broad- based mixture of rock…everything from the Beatles to Crosby, Stills, and Nash, all the way to the Dave Matthews Band. WAEF is one of that shrinking breed, a singly-owned station. Donna MacNeil fought tooth and nail for this CP against some much bigger competition, and now she’s up against two well-established AM-FM combos, Saga’s WFEA/WZID and Knight’s WGIR AM-FM (along with another standalone, Bob Bittner’s easy-listening WKBR 1250).

A small Connecticut AM signal has been sold. WXCT 1220 in Hamden, a suburb of New Haven, is being sold by Milstar Broadcasting to Quinnipiac College in Hamden. Reported price, according to Broadcasting and Cable, is $500,000. WXCT has a long and colorful history, including stints as WDEE, WCDQ, WOMN (targeted at WOMeN!), WSCR, and WNNR…and just about every format in the book, including multiple tries at top 40, country, and oldies. Most recently, WXCT has been a Spanish-language broadcaster.

Up in Vermont, Pathfinder Broadcasting is building a two FM-one AM combo, with the purchase of WFAD 1490 Middlebury VT, WMNM 92.1 Port Henry NY, and separately, WGTK 100.9 Middlebury VT. WMNM (Oldies 92) and WGTK (K-101 Classic Rock) both serve the Burlington area; WFAD is a local class IV for Middlebury. WMNM, by the way, is the latest incarnation of what began as WHRC, Peter Hunn’s one-man station that he documented in a book some years back. NERW contributing editor Garrett Wollman passed through the Burlington area earlier this week; he reports that WWGT 96.7 Vergennes-Burlington was not heard, although they had been testing earlier in the week. Also not on yet was WRJT 103.1 Royalton VT.

2 COMMENTS

There is no profiteering rule anymore. You can buy a station today and sell it tomorrow if you want. (And also, the sale price includes not only WAVL but also the FM translator, which often is worth more than an AM these days.)